


At the knife's edge

by orphan_account



Category: Ravenous (1999)
Genre: 19th Century, Cannibalism, Gen, Historical, Historical Fantasy, M/M, Personal interpretation, Psychology, Wendigo, darker interpretation, playing cat and mouse, ravenous 1999
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-14 10:27:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13588140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Boyd suspects all along that he may be partway down the highway to hell - and Ives is only too delighted to exploit this.





	At the knife's edge

**Author's Note:**

> My personal interpretation of the thoughts, motives, and deeds of both Boyd and Ives, during the 'rescue' mission, as the truth slowly becomes revealed. A little bit darker than if the movie is just taken at face value. With a good dash of homoeroticism, as in the movie, of course. 
> 
> All the spoken dialogue is directly from, or at least paraphrasing the movie.

“Did you feel at all… physically changed?” 

Ives had, of course, clocked George - easy to surmise, then, that the native had passed on the “legend” to his comrades, just as Ives’ own guide had been so.... Helpful. George might almost pose a threat, were it not for the soldiers’ solid commitment to accepting the tunnel perspective of their own society - much like their rations; stamped, sealed, and preapproved. 

Still, Boyd had asked. Merely a man of an open mind? But Ives’ scented something else, something… More. 

Boyd’s blue eyes betrayed a flicker of tension, as he waited for a response. Of course. A thrill ran through Ives’ veins. The question did not concern Ives’ condition. It was… personal. How was it that the Captain had been decorated, promoted, and exiled as an undesirable, all in one day no less? 

“Virility.”

Damn, what an effort; to buckle himself back down, back into the tediously humble Colquhoun... he couldn’t quite resist pressing further. Well, his curiosity had always been insatiable. 

“Why do you ask?” (For a friend, perhaps? Ives would have smirked)

And, in the split second before the hapless Toffler shattered it all, (and himself, silly, delicious fool), there it was. The slightest hint - but Ives’ wendigo senses, starving though he was, were more than able to catch it. That tightening of the lips, that shift of the eyes. Looking at a guilty memory? Oh, this might prove Ives’ most entertaining hunt yet. 

*

When Colqhoun sat right back up again, Boyd knew that the legend was truth. 

They played their little dodging game. The gap was closing in. Even from the heights of the precipice, Boyd could smell the evergreen resin below. The man’s, no, the creature’s eyes, his red smile. That it mocked? - Predictable. The vitality in the that face, his teasing movements, all drained directly from the life force of Boyd’s comrades. But some sense told Boyd that it was he who would prove the trophy prize. Could it be…?

“Come here”

The smile seemed knowing, and it widened, blood seeping out obscenely. Boyd remembered well the iron tang, the warmth - coursing first down his throat, then through his very veins. Not that he’d sought it at the time. Not that he’d known of the consequence. Had he known… better to have died a coward, under all the corpses of all the men he had failed. 

“Get away from me!”

Had Colquhoun seen him by the side of Colonel Hart? It meant naught; a moment of fixation. With a wounded friend, or with a witness at hand, it was easy for Boyd to cover his nose and feign squeamishness. Surely he could be trusted… But with Hart laid out before him, freshly dead and dripping...that raw red smell drew in his every instinct. Against his every instinct. Then Private Reich wrenched him away. 

He’d have snapped out of it without interference, of course. Of course. Still.. For a moment it had been as if his true self had left him, vacated, and what was waiting in its place…something alien… yet frighteningly familiar. 

The hunger was palpable on Colquhoun - almost radiant with the lust for the hunt. Hypnotic. Didn’t certain predators have the power to capture with a single-minded stare, freezing their prey, before the all powerful clamp of jaws finalised the job? Boyd shuddered to think of his own face twisted in such a manner. 

“Get AWAY.”

Behind - certain death. In front - probable death… or the possibility of something inconceivably worse. Time to fly. At least, what with the sheerness of the drop, it would be some time before the bastard got his body to feast upon.

 

*

To think that Boyd believed himself to be successfully concealed was laughable, almost endearingly so. What; with one man rotting dead beside him and his own untreated flesh rotting alive? True, Colquhoun made sure to search the environs of their little cubbyhole with less stealth, nay, deliberate clumsiness. That spike in adrenaline that wafted on the air each time he circled near was utterly mouthwatering. The muskiness of the living man more intense each week. The dead man, putrifying, yes, but still acceptable fare for the likes of him. Of them. Indeed… Ives could almost scent Boyd’s own hunger.

How much quicker things would be were they to speak frankly - frankness by force if necessary. But perhaps… this game would be infinitely more… pleasurable.

If Boyd gave in immediately to his lust for flesh, well, that would mark him as weak, a disappointingly useless ally. A waste of time (if a most mouthwatering one, if it came to that) in Ives’ eyes, in his grand scheme. And worse, a bore. 

Yet it was almost astonishing how long Boyd seemed determined to hold out for. Reserved, tender Boyd, turning out to be quite the stoic. (And to think, none of that stiff upper lip even… borrowed... from Private Reich.) Colquhoun’s replenished senses told him that it was nothing physical holding Boyd off - not weakness, not revulsion - even now. But soon the man would begin to crack. The man was neither courageous nor coward enough to allow himself to die thusly. 

As the weeks passed, Ives now used his utmost stealth to check up on his little experiment. Even if Boyd were to catch wind of him and make a desperate bid - freedom, one last stand, (hell, mere escape from the cabin fever) - he would pose no more threat than a child. But it was Boyd’s hunger that Ives attuned himself to. A hunger that was gnawing itself deeper each passing day. That all consuming hunger. Soon, the scent would be on the air. The scent of a surrender. A surrender not to death, but to strength. 

Come that day, Colquhoun knew he could set out; set his grand scheme in motion. Fate would take care of a reunion; Fort Spencer was the obvious, if not the only choice for Boyd to return to once he had finally buckled up and chosen life, and, funnily enough, the good Fort had a new vacancy to be filled. That of Colonel. Wartimes are desperate times, desperate times call for desperate measures, and the Army HQ would doubtless be too grateful that anybody would actively volunteer to go serve in that hellhole to question why.

Ives grinned, brushing the cave dust off his uniform. He’d use the time it took to break Boyd in to practice the use of his old persona. As the good private Toffler (nourishing, but sadly bland to the palate) would have said - patience is a virtue. And when they meet again... Captain Boyd will fling himself into the arms of Colonel Ives, willingly. Greedily. A point of... manifest destiny.


End file.
